I was just a few minutes away from arriving home and squeezing Anna after an absence of several days and I was SO excited. I called Cindy and asked her to bring Anna out front so that we could say hello without Leila flipping her lid all over us at the same time. Just as I was getting off the phone with Cindy, not two minutes from home, I got a text message from my best friend Katie. Katie and her husband recently became pregnant after trying for many years. They were on their way to the hospital because she was experience cramping and bleeding, and they were very scared. My heart sank into my stomach... As we pulled into the driveway I was smiling at Anna with fearful tears in my eyes.
We had a nice little time at home - Anna wouldn't let me out of her sight - and then went out to dinner with Cindy. Anna was just so bubbly and happy, so excited to see her Mama and Dada. She ate her dinner very well, including an order of steamed peas from the restaurant. She then started doing one of the most adorable and endearing things she's ever done... she fed me peas one by one and then after each one said "kiss!" -- she was asking to give me a kiss! So I'd lean over and she'd kiss me on my cheek. So it went: pea, "kiss!", wet one on my cheek. It was so amazingly wonderful - and then I got another text from Katie.
The worst has happened - they lost their baby today. It's so sad and unfair and horrifying... I can't imagine their grief. Just then Anna reached up to feed me another pea... and I thought "why do I deserve this??"
I felt guilty, and I still feel guilty. I looked at Anna, so happy and healthy and loving and smart, just waiting to feed me a soggy pea and plant one on my cheek. Why do I deserve this and not Katie?? It's not like that at all... we are both deserving and there is no good reason that this should happen to one and not the other.
But I can try to reason it away - after all, life is unfair, isn't it? Why should we expect that a loving, deserving couple who can provide everything for their child would have a healthy baby? We shouldn't, but we do anyway. No matter how much we know in our heads that the world won't always reward the deserving, we still want it to and we still feel disillusioned and wounded when it doesn't. (Or maybe that's just me. Is it just me?)
*sigh*
I have a few things to say about this.
First, about the survivor's guilt - as I talked with Chris about it, he asked me if Katie would want me to feel that way. I thought probably not, but at the same time, I can't shake it. I feel bad tweeting good things about Anna because I don't want to parade my good fortune out there, and I feel bad tweeting the bad things when they happen because they must seem so trivial - and I know that Katie would give almost anything for an extra-fussy bedtime or an exploding poopy diaper. I was reminded of my own experience after losing my mom. I certainly didn't begrudge anyone their living mothers, however I do remember feeling a certain indignation when people would complain about their mothers for something stupid. Especially those first few months, I just wanted to shake them and shout "you APPRECIATE your healthy mother RIGHT NOW!" I'm sure Katie will be feeling the same thing in the weeks and months ahead... and that she will struggle with it like I did, keeping quiet on the outside while screaming on the inside.
Second, I'm glad that I still feel like there should be justice in the world. It means that I'm not an apathetic cynic who just throws up their hands whenever injustice rears its ugly head and says "well, that's life!" and gives up. I'm glad that I get angry and think about what I can do to help. Sometimes I am rather helpless and all I can do is pray about it and offer my love and support, like this time. But other times I can do more, and can even work to make it right again. I wouldn't want to give that up, though it would certainly be much easier to detach from painful injustices. It's worth it to stay connected.
Third - please take a few minutes and pray for Katie and Matt. If you know them, please send them a note or email too.
Despite our lack of ways to understand why terrible things happen to good people, I do have faith that God takes all things, good and bad, and works with them towards the good. It may take a long time for that to happen. It was years before I perceived anything good coming out of my Mom's death, but now I can name several - the biggest ones being my tight bond with my sister and my ability to provide meaningful support Chris and his family when they lost his father to cancer. I don't know what good can come of this loss; right now it just seems too horrible to imagine anything, but I have faith that it can and will happen.
Katie and Matt, from the deepest part of my heart, I am so, so sorry.
